- Jim Ellis for Oral Care Club, discussing electric toothbrushes versus manual toothbrushes, what really is the difference and do I really need an electric toothbrush? The answer to that is no, you really don't need an electric toothbrush. But, why not? Why not use an electric toothbrush? You don't really need a car because you can get somewhere on a bicycle.

Well, the answers to that are pretty obvious, you can get there more quickly. Same thing with an electric toothbrush versus a manual toothbrush. Let me explain that. When you brush with a manual toothbrush versus an electric toothbrush, they both have heads, they both have bristles on the heads. When you push the toothbrush, the manual toothbrush past your teeth one time, that's one pass across your teeth. As you continue to brush your teeth, that's more passes.

Let's say you brush as fast as you possibly can. I'll give you four to 500 times past your teeth. Well, can you keep that up for two minutes? Maybe. Do you have control when you're goin' that fast? Probably not. With an electric toothbrush, you're getting up to 40,000 brushstrokes a minute across your teeth, 40,000 versus 500, so that's many more strokes, plus you get the benefit of control.

The bristles are moving, not the handle, so you can have that minute control moving around your teeth while the bristles are doing all the movements. So the cleaning is more quick and can be more precise with the electric toothbrush. So you can use a regular toothbrush. Why not get an electric toothbrush? What kind of electric toothbrush do you need if you decided, if I just talked you into the electric toothbrush, all you need is something that's going to move, the bristles that are going to move in some way, that will help.

They have a lot of things nowadays. Some of these toothbrushes have 15 different modes. You can push the button and it'll go for different modes and you can have some toothbrushes that connect Bluetooth to your phone to remind you that you didn't brush yet today. All this kinda stuff, that's not necessary.

There's no need to spend upwards of $200 on an electric toothbrush. You can get a great electric toothbrush in the area of $30, $40 online, search it out, you can find a wonderful electric toothbrush for that. But studies have shown that absolutely electric toothbrushes are better for you than regular toothbrushes and can give you a far better cleaning in less time.